Gonorrhea is the most prevalent communicable disease reported in the United States, with an estimated 2.5 million or more cases reported annually. See Tierney et al., Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, 37th ed., 1998, Appleton & Lange. Gonorrhea is caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae, a gram-negative diplococcus bacterium typically found inside polymorphonuclear cells, and is most commonly transmitted during sexual intercourse. These bacteria can infect the genital tract, the mouth and the rectum. In women, the opening to the uterus, the cervix, is the first site of infection. The incubation period of the bacterium is usually 2–8 days (see Tierney et al., Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, 37th ed., 1998, Appleton & Lange). Gonorrhea is an important cause of urethritis in men and cervicitis in women. Gonorrhea may spread into the uterus and fallopian tubes resulting in pelvic inflammatory disease (“PID”) and in fact approximately 20% to 40% of PID and 14% of tubal infertility can be attributed to gonococcal infections. See Chan et al., 2000, Arch. Pathol. Lab. Med. 124:1649–1652.
Traditional laboratory diagnosis of gonorrhea is done by an overnight culture of clinical swabs (e.g., urine or cervical) obtained from a subject followed by biochemical and/or microscopic identification of Neisseria gonorrhoeae. 
Recently, nucleic acid amplification tests have become widely used for detection and/or diagnosis. Currently available commercial Neisseria gonorrhoeae DNA amplification tests include PCR (Roche Molecular Systems, Branchburg, N.J.), and strand displacement amplification (SDA; Becton Dickinson, Sparks, Md.). In vitro nucleic acid amplification techniques provide powerful tools for detection and analysis of nucleic acids, especially when the target nucleic acids are present in small quantities. The sensitivity of such methods has made them particularly suitable in areas such as medical diagnosis (e.g., detection of infectious agents like bacteria and viruses, diagnosis of inherited and acquired genetic diseases, and the establishment of tissue type), isolation of genes, and forensic medicine (e.g., forensic tests for detection of specific nucleic acids in criminal investigations).
Nucleic acid amplification techniques are traditionally classified according to the temperature requirements of the amplification process. Isothermal amplifications are conducted at a constant temperature, in contrast to amplifications that require cycling between high and low temperatures. Examples of isothermal amplification techniques are: Strand Displacement Amplification (SDA; Walker et al., 1992, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 89:392–396; Walker et al., 1992, Nuc. Acids. Res. 20:1691–1696; and EP 0 497 272, all of which are incorporated herein by reference), self-sustained sequence replication (3SR; Guatelli et al., 1990, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 87:1874–1878), the Qβ replicase system (Lizardi et al., 1988, BioTechnology 6:1197–1202), and the techniques disclosed in WO 90/10064 and WO 91/03573. Examples of techniques that require temperature cycling are: polymerase chain reaction (PCR; Saiki et al., 1985, Science 230:1350–1354), ligase chain reaction (LCR; Wu et al., 1989, Genomics 4:560–569; Barringer et al., 1990, Gene 89:117–122; Barany, 1991, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 88:189–193), transcription-based amplification (Kwoh et al., 1989, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86:1173–1177) and restriction amplification (U.S. Pat. No. 5,102,784).
The currently available nucleic acid amplification tests for Neisseria gonorrhoea, however, lack an internal control mechanism to assay for any inhibitory reaction conditions or human errors that are present in the tests and are thus prone to false negative results. Thus, there is a need for an assay that decreases the possibility of false negative results.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae shares a high degree of homology with other closely related Neisseria species. Thus, there is clearly a need for the development of new methods and oligonucleotides that are able to confirm the results of existing assays and/or increase the specificity and/or sensitivity of a test to detect Neisseria gonorrhoeae. 
The present invention provides a diplex nucleic acid amplification assay which can be used as an alternative to the current monoplex Neisseria gonorrhoeae assay (i.e., no internal amplification control in the same reaction mixture with a target sequence). The present invention also provides oligonucleotides that can be used in both diplex and monoplex nucleic acid amplification assays designed to amplify and/or detect Neisseria gonorrhoeae nucleic acids.
Citation or discussion of a reference herein shall not be construed as an admission that such is prior art to the present invention.